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You Will Love This!

I thought I'd share another easy project connected with our recently completed Accidental Makeover series. If you missed it, you can follow the entire journey here.

We had an older kitchen, the kind with the panels between the cabinets and the ceiling that were just wasted space. We knocked them out and made shelves, painting inside including the ceiling that was exposed. The plan was to fill the new shelves with baskets, boxes and chests that will store our Christmas decorations, all neatly sorted and easy to find using a key posted inside a cabinet door.

This is how it turned out. Love it!

I knew that dust will be an issue, so I bought mostly closed containers. Only three of them had no tops. Dust would surely be an issue for the decorations inside the open containers, so that was challenge #1. Challenge #2 is that all but two of the containers are covered in fabric or rough wood, (and one is leather). I plan to only climb up there twice a year - once to get them down to decorate and replace the containers and once to get them back down to pack Christmas away and return them to the shelves. Dust is going to accumulate on all the tops. Trying to "brush" dust from fabric and rough wood doesn't work.

What does wash off easily? I have long covered our guest beds with old shower curtains to keep the dust off between uses and since they are both upstairs where no one goes, looks don't matter. They do a great job and dust comes off them lickety-split! So, off to Home Goods I went and bought a new, clear shower curtain for my dusty dilemma in the kitchen!

For challenge #1, the three open bins, I cut the plastic a good deal larger than their tops
so it will accommodate things piled inside. Then I cut the plastic in
to the container on the corners (like in sewing) to make fitting and
turning the plastic inside the container easy. I baste stitched the
back plastic flap to the inside back of the liners that were in the
baskets. Then I tucked the other three ample flaps inside and temporarily
secured them to the front inside with a pin since they are empty now
with nothing to hold the plastic up. This will catch any dust between now and putting Christmas away this year.

For challenge #2 I traced the tops of each container onto the plastic and cut them out. The plastic just lays invisibly on top of the containers. With seventeen containers, I didn't want to waste time trying to match them up when I was putting the containers away, so as I cut them out, I wrote the box number on each plastic piece with a Sharpie marker. These are the same numbers I'll use on the key I put inside a cabinet door, listing what's in each container (when I put Christmas away this year).

Now, dust will accumulate on top of the easily washed plastic pieces. When I get each box down to decorate, I'll wash and dry each plastic piece and replace them.

TA-DA! You can't see any of this when you look up at them and both problems are solved, and all for under $5! There are SO many great uses for shower curtain plastic!